A group of 19 children, mostly orphans, are “in great danger” by being stranded in a sanatorium in Mariupol, a Ukrainian city besieged by Russian forces, relatives and witnesses told AFP on Saturday.
Children and adolescents, aged 4 to 17, were sent to this juvenile clinic specializing in the treatment of lung diseases, before the outbreak of the Russian offensive on February 24.
Their guardians could not recover them because of the fighting in this bombarded city for several weeks, told AFP a witness, Alexei Volochchuk.
He himself took refuge in the sanatorium, before being evacuated from the besieged city which suffers from a shortage of water, gas and electricity and where all communications are practically cut off.
Evacuated to Zaporizhie on Friday, Mr. Volochchuk says the children live in frozen basements and have not washed for more than two weeks, Russian missiles having fallen not far from the clinic in recent days.
“There is no heating, it is cold. One of the girls, about eight years old, showed me a sore on her face caused by the cold,” he told AFP.
According to him, a “heroic” pulmonologist, a cook and two nurses take care of the children, while the local police bring them food, which is cooked outside on a fire near the sanatorium building.
But the food could quickly run out, he worries.
One of the guardians, Olga Lopatkina, director with her husband of a private orphanage in Ougledar, 100 km north of Mariupol, told AFP that in January she sent six of her wards, aged 6 to 17 years.
After the start of the Russian offensive, she left her city with the remaining children to reach Lviv, in western Ukraine, then Hungary before finally arriving in France. She desperately wants the children left behind in Mariupol to join her.
But residents can only evacuate the city with their own cars.
In Geneva, the Stop TB charitable foundation says it is “terribly worried” for these children.
The foundation which fights against tuberculosis would like the children to be welcomed in other countries, but “the biggest problem is to get them out of there”, explains to AFP its executive director, Lucicia Ditiu, saying she is “desperate” .
“These are orphans… the most vulnerable,” she breathes. With a thought for the four adults stranded with them, she adds: “I dare not imagine what it can be like to be stranded with 19 children in a cellar without water or food”.